a moment of clarity

Rainbow Tradition

I am successfully taking some much needed time off of work to relax – without being sick or having a ton of homework to do.

My WoW subscription has officially lapsed.

So what’s there to do?

Play the D3 expansion!

Tir and I started Crusaders at roughly the same time. Seeing as how I hadn’t logged into D3 since before the patch – the FIRST patch, not the expansion, but the very first big balancing patch back in 2012 I think – I started on normal mode. I think he’s been bouncing between master and elite.

With the difference in difficulty, I’m usually a couple minutes ahead of him in completing a quest arc. I have fewer elite packs to deal with, but I also take more time poking around in my inventory so it almost balances out.

The big difference is in level. By the time I was level 10 I had caught up to him in the story, but he was level 20. I’m now level 30 and I think he’s 42 – but we both just started Act III.

So far, I’m really enjoying the Crusader class.

The attacks are big and beefy and even with my so-so gear I feel like a force to be reckoned with. I haven’t come close to dying yet (chalk that up to the difficulty level, not any skill on my part) and I feel relatively safe wading into huge piles of mobs that even my barbarian would have thought twice about.

I’m not sure how much of the perceived ease is due to the changes in the difficulties and how much is the Crusader is just that bad-ass. Of course, I’m carrying a shield that contains enough steel to cover a car and I’m whipping around a 2-hander like it was a piece of licorice. (That passive may be a wee bit overpowered. I like it.)

Tir rolled the female model and I took the male. From what I can hear over the explosions of bodies, the female Crusader is a little colder and distant. I was expecting the male version to be just as detached, but he’s actually rather warm and friendly with a bit of a sense of humor. I think I may have been a little disappointed until I got used to it.

Looking at some of these old rainbows, it appears that the leveling has definitely changed a little. I know my play style of “KILL AND BREAK IT ALL” has not changed, but my Crusader is level 15 by the time this shot was taken and pre-Reaper of Souls characters were in the 10-13 level range for this quest spot.

…

Flipping through the achievements, it appears my original achievement for completing Act IV on my barbarian was turned into a feat of strength, as did all my completions for the old difficulty levels. *shakes cane and mutters about Inferno back in the day* (To be fair, I didn’t complete Inferno, I was in the middle of Act II when I got distracted and then MoP came out…)

I’m not sure if I want to swap back to my Barbarian any time soon or if I should just plow through the rest of the story/leveling experience with the Crusader.